the tour

Tuesday night was our big hospital tour. It was us and five other couples. I was the least pregnant one there (by a week), but my belly was giving one of the late-August girls a run for her money.

Characters of interest included:

• a vaguely Filipino woman due August 7th, who was about 5 feet tall with a really small build and a football-shaped shelf-belly;
• a 5’3” version of Vern Troyer, who was there with the adult version of Cindy Loo Who;
• a younger couple, who couldn’t have been older than 23;
• and a crunchy, granola-type, probably in her early 30s, who arrived about 20 minutes before her husband.

Oh, and we were the tallest ones there.

The instructor/tour guide was good. She was a former pre-school teacher with three kids. Kind of on the crunchy, granola side. She told us she was a little zippy, as she had just changed her migraine medication.

We sat through an hour-long Powerpoint presentation, giving us the basics of what to expect, what to bring, visiting hours, etc. And then we took the walking tour. You can check out the virtual version here.

After the standard tour, anyone who wanted to look at the Alternative Birthing Center could stay behind and go see that. The crunchy granola type and her husband, who are delivering there, stayed. And we decided that we’d like to see the facility as well (out of curiosity).

So we’re looking around the suite – it’s basically a living room with two bedroom-like delivery rooms off of it. And crunchy’s husband, who hasn’t really said anything until now, asks our guide, “Do they let you keep the placenta?”

Pat and I look at each other.

“Hmmm. No one’s ever asked me that before.”

She goes on to explain standard procedure with the placenta. (They deliver it, run some tests on it, and then keep it in the lab for a day or two, in case mom develops any infections that they want to cross reference with lab work on it.) And then says that they should ask their midwife to look into that for them.

Meanwhile, I’m trying to keep a straight face while figuring out what the hell this couple would want with their baby’s placenta. Apparently Pat was too.

We wrap up the tour, get out of the hospital and then burst into speculation. Our ideas were mostly on the reasonable side.

“Maybe they’re going to bury it in the backyard and plant a tree on it.”

“Maybe they want it in formaldehyde on their mantle.”

"Maybe there's some religious ritual they want to do with it."

A little strange, but, for the most part, socially acceptable. We’re still weirded out by it, and start speculating about why the husband was late to begin with. ("Maybe he was roaming the hospital looking for placentas.")

I get to work the next morning, and tell my pregnant coworker, who's an authority on most things strange, about the tour, the couple, and their question about the placenta. She says, as though this were a familiar concept, “I was watching this show awhile back, and some people eat them.”

Um, what?

“They fry it up and share it with their family. It’s something about absorbing the baby into the new family.”

“That’s absolutely disgusting.”

Apparently all this talk made her ill as well, as she ended up going home sick about two hours later. Oops.

Needless to say, I have signed over my placenta to science.